What Are Your Plans for Christmas?

“Well Trey, what are your plans for Christmas?”

It was three days before Christmas and Trey was a fifteen year old who had been attending youth programs at the urban church where I served. His single mother, a lay preacher in the city, went on to say, “You had better start making plans. Why don’t you go to your dad’s place for Christmas?”

Dad lived a few blocks away in a modest home with his current wife and several younger children. His older son was somewhat of a leftover from a relationship which hadn’t worked out a decade and a half earlier. Over the years, Trey was at best a diminished priority to dad as another marriage and younger children took precedence.

“Dad doesn’t have anything for me” Trey replied.

“Well, neither do I so you had better be making some plans for Christmas,” said his mother.

Trey was one of a dozen or so students attending a local alternative school who had attached themselves to the fringe of our church’s youth program. Most lived much unstructured, purposeless lives, showing up for an abbreviated school day due to court ordered coercion. The remainder of each day was spent sleeping, watching unsupervised television, and then spending later evenings and nights hanging out with friends who filled the void left by absentee family members. As a social safety net, the ever available gangs offered the measure of acceptance, belonging, safety, and solidarity lacking at home. Trey, however, had a sense of the dangers of gang involvement. He also knew the personal danger facing him every day due to his lack of support and the safety which would have been afforded to him by gang members. He would at times call me to pick him up at the school bus stop and transport him to the decaying house where he shared that small upstairs apartment with his mother, because he feared harassment by gang members.

Trey’s story, though unique to his situation, has many similarities to that of young people in nearly every strata of society. Abandoned physically, socially, or emotionally, there are needs which will not be met though any institution or program, as helpful as those things may be.

As I considered Trey’s situation on that cold December day, I thought back to my earlier years of youth ministry, just after seminary. An assumption in those days was that vital to any quality home was the presence of two committed parents. Be design that will always be the model. It, however, occurred to me that an increasing number of the youth with whom I interacted, would be blessed to have even one parent, or grandparent, or committed adult in their life. In some cases, even resident parents were in effect absent due to social distractions, emotional instability or economic and career demands.

It would be an understatement to say that parenthood has been devalued. A few years ago the lack of importance our culture places on parenting was once again revealed when a prominent media figure referred to the wife of a presidential candidate by saying that the woman had “never worked a day in her life”. This, in spite of the fact that the candidate’s wife successfully raised five sons who were all married and living productive adult lives, was quite an ignorant remark.

Yes, parenting has been devalued, and sometimes even substituted with artificial and deficient surrogates. Most parents have at times relied on some of the substitutes because the alternatives have so much become a part of our modern lifestyles. Although not always bad, substitutes can easily and in some cases quickly replace the importance of a parent’s time, commitment, and love. Next week we will look at some common substitutes for parenting.